USA > New York > Onondaga County > Pompey > Re-union of the sons and daughters of the old town of Pompey > Part 20
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were Samuel, Jonathan, William, Christopher, Humphrey, Nathan and Waitstill.
Humphrey, born July 4th, 1699, married Jerusha Mor- gan, Feb. 5, 1724 ; his sons were Humphrey, William, Sol- omon, James, Samuel, Christopher, Waitstill, Isaac and Nathan.
Solomon, born June 17th, 1729, married Hannah Punder- son, Feb. 18th, 1751; his sons were Solomon, Miles, Ste- phen, Punderson, Henry, Cyrus and Humphrey.
Punderson Avery was born in Groton, Conn., May 21st, 1765; he consequently was not old enough to enter the war of the Revolution, but to show that he was of the right stock, we mention that at the massacre of Fort Griswold, on the 6th of Sept., 1781, nine of his uncles and cousins fell, and he waded in blood over his shoes to obtain their remains from the Fort. He married Lovina Barnes, daugh- ter of Phineas Barnes and Phebe Bernent, Dec. 15th, 1786, at Great Barrington, Mass .; here he resided some time, and then removed to the then so called "Royal Grant," in Her- kimer County ; here he built and run a grist mill for a few years, and it was believed to be located farther west than any mill for grinding grain on the Continent. In 1796, he removed to Pompey, and settled on a farm a mile south of Oran ; here he reared his large family, and died Sept. 10th, 1840.
Mr. Avery was peculiarly fitted by nature for a pioneer ; he was among the first in any enterprise to improve the minds, the morals or condition of his fellow men; the church, the school and public library, always found in him an ardent supporter ; his patriotism secured him a place as captain in the militia ; and his integrity, as administrator for many a widow and orphan ; his love of justice made him often the arbiter in his neighbors' quarrels, and his excellent judgment often turned the scale, for or against, many an in- cipient undertaking.
But he was most useful to his fellow men, perhaps, as a
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mechanic ; his trade properly was a mill-wright, but he often was employed on small machinery, and on one occasion, by a very wealthy man, to construct a perpetual motion ; he had been taught to work by square rule, and a barn still standing next south of his old residence, is believed to be the first in the county framed by "square rule;" hejwas al- most continually employed in building grist mills, saw mills, fulling mills, carding machines, tanneries, and later, cider mills and threshing machines. About 1820, he constructed a cast iron plow, which, for many years, was a general favorite in this locality ; his inventive faculties were large, and he would probably have allowed them some little scope, and at some cost, had not prudence and the demands of a family of twelve children, kept him busy in labor that paid every day. His children were Hannah P., who became first Mrs. Samuel Willard, the mother of W. W. Willard, of Syr- acuse ; her second husband was William Higgins, of Van Buren ; Sally B., who married George Miller, of Tunkhan- nock, Pa .; Lucy, who married Belden Resseguie, VanBur- en; William; Phebe, who married Colonel Reynolds, of Cazenovia : Candace, relict of Horace Sweet; Lucetta, who married William M. Wood, of Mishawaka, Ind .; Perlena, the wife of Abner Duell, Manlius; Perlina, the relict of Euroclyden Gerre, who resides in VanBuren ; Cyrus; Nan- cy, the wife of Elam Thomas, Knowlesville, Orleans Co .: and Samuel.
William Avery, son of the preceding, was born in Herki- mer county, August 16, 1793, married Eunice Hart, daugh- ter of Comfort, October 24, 1815. He early manifested a disposition to be a mechanic, was continually contriving water mills and wind mills to drive other machinery, and long before he attained his majority he was employed in all parts of the country to repair machinery, and was considered the most skillful workman known in Central New York. His inventive faculties were of a high order, but often from a lack of books on mechanical subjects, he lost much valu- able time in experiments that had long before been tried
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and exploded. His first invention of any importance, was a machine for making wire harness for looms in 1824. His other inventions were numerous, and hardly a year passed without a patent being granted to him. The one by which he is best known, was the rotary engine, believed to be still the simplest and cheapest in the world, and in a limited sphere has proved for about 40 years extremely valuable. The first steam saw mill at Centerville, this county, was run by one of these engines for many years, and did a vast amount of work.
In 1822 he built a small steamboat which was first launched on the mill pond at Buellville; it was afterwards taken to Cazenovia lake, and finally to the Erie canal. The Onon- daga Gazette of October 1, 1823, says: " A steamboat built at Buellville, in Pompey, passed through this village last week." The engine from this boat was purchased by the late Henry Gifford, of Syracuse, who used it to pump salt water for many years.
Mr. Avery moved to Salina and carried on a large foun- dry and machine shop, and afterwards removed to Syracuse, where he was for a time in company with Elam Lynds; he built the machinery for the first steamboat on Lake Ontario, and was the first white man to navigate the St. Lawrence river, from Kingston to the head of the Long Sault Rapids, passing two considerable rapids before reaching that point. Travel on that route in those days was so inconsiderable that it did not pay, and the proprietors withdrew the boat in a year or two. In 1837 he removed to Chicago, which he then described as a little sickly sunken hole. He soon took a contract of the State of Illinois to make the rock cut on the summit of the Illinois and Michigan canal ; the price was $1.49 per cubic yard, and the estimated cost $240,000; this was considered the largest contract that had ever been taken in this country at that time. While completing this great undertaking, by which the waters of Lake Michigan were calculated to be diverted to the Mississippi, he was attacked by a fatal disease, and died on the 16th of November, 1840,
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at Athens, and is buried at Rockport, Illinois. Some of his feats of walking when the country was new were considered very good; he walked on one occasion from Oran to Ithaca in a day and back the next.
Cyrus, the second son of Pundersor, was born in Pompey, July 28th, 1807; married first, Calista Hibbard, February 3d, 1828 ; second, Lurinda Jones, February 3d, 1831 ; third, Sabra Vosburgh, January 3d, 1847. His early life was spent in Pompey and mostly at mechanical work. He removed to Tunkhannock, Pa., about 1840, where he has since re- sided, except for the last ten or twelve years, he has been in Europe selling his inventions, which are numerous, and some of them quite valuable. One winter he spent in Russia and threshed wheat for the Emperor several months ; was on the most intimate terms with the Grand Duke, Constantine, and finally presented his machine to the Government. He has a large family of children-five sons, all mechanics, and five daughters.
Samuel Avery, youngest child of Punderson, was born in Pompey, February 18th, 1812; married first, Lucinda Jones, February 3d, 1831 ; second, Eliza Flynn. His natural bent was mechanics as with the others, but forced by circum- stances to be a farmer, he came near being ruined for any- thing useful. Dr. Daniel Denison, who had had the credit of his misguidance, took him into his office as a student of medicine, and in 1844 he graduated at Castleton Medieal College, Vermont. He removed to Rochester, and com- meneed the practice of medicine and surgery, his natural mechanical ability aiding him materially in the latter. He stayed here but a few years and finally removed to Phoenix, . where, with the exception of a few months in Syracuse and a year in Baldwinsville, he has since resided. He gave up practice a few years since, and at present is the Secretary of the Oswego and Onondaga Insurance Company.
Grandentia II. and Florello P., sons of Cyrus, born in Pompey, reside at Tunkhannock, Pa., machinists. Henry
17
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M., only living child of Samuel, resides at South Haven, Mich., a watchmaker and jeweler.
REV. ELEAZER STORRS BARROWS
Was born January 18th, 1790, in Mannsfield, Conn .; iu October, 1797, moved with his father's family, to Middle- bury, Vt .; he prepared for College at the Addison County Grammar School, and entered Middlebury College, Octo- ber, 1807, from which he graduated, October, 1811 ; he was in Castleton in 1811 and 1812; in the Carolinas from 1812 to 1815, where in 1815 he was ordained a minister of the Gospel ; he finished his Theological studies at the Princeton Theological Seminary, 1815-16 ; was tutor in Middlebury College a portion of the year 1815 ; preached in Middletown N. Y., 1816 and 1817 ; December,1817, was appointed Tutor in Hamilton College, Clinton, N. Y., and in September, 1818, Professor of Latin, which position he held for about three years ; in April, 1822, he settled at Pompey Hill, and was soon after installed Pastor of the Congregational Church of Pompey : here he remained till 1828, and a portion of the time in addition to his duties as Pastor of the Church he had charge of the Pompey Academy. He edited the Christian Journal at Utica, N. Y., from 1828 to 1833, supplying the pulpit of the Waterville Presbyterian Church a portion of the time: from 1833 to 1842 he was Pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Cazenovia, N. Y., when his tailing health com- pelled him to resign the position.
The remainder of his life was spent at his home in Utica, N. Y., performing such ministerial labors as his health per- mitted until his death, which occurred July 28th, 1847.
Ile was married May 7th, 1822, to Miss Catharine C., daughter of Dr. Thomas Fuller, of Cooperstown, N. Y., where she now resides enjoying a green old age and "her children arise up and call her blessed." Seven children were born to them, five of whom are now living; Mrs. M. F. Cooper, of Albany, N. Y., is the only one who can claim Pompey as
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the place of her nativity. Their two sons reside at Janesville, Wisconsin, and two daughters at Cooperstown, N. Y.
Such is a sketch of the life of one of Pompey's early min- isters, furnished by one of the members of his family. How full of activity in good works from its commencement to its early close ! Although only fifty-seven years of age when called to bid adieu to earthly friends, and 'enter into that rest which remains for the pure in heart, he had filled the measure of a long and useful life ; he has ceased from his labors but his works follow him. Eternity can only reveal the extent of the influence he has exerted even as Pastor of the Church in Pompey and Preceptor of the Academy, not to speak of the other fields of labor in which he was engag- ed. The following letter written by his aged wife in re- spouse to a communication from Dr. L. B. Wells, of Utica, requesting the foregoing sketch for publication, will be of interest to those especially who knew her and who appreciat- ed her many virtues.
COOPERSTOWN, Oct. 16th, 1871. DR. L. B. WELLS.
Dear Sir :- Your favor requesting a history of my hus- band's life to be handed down to posterity with the worthies of Pompey, was duly received, and estimated as a mark of respect to myself and family ; I sentit to my son, the Doctor, who has written the enclosed brief sketch which I hope may meet with your approbation,
Respectfully Yours, CATHARINE F. BARROWS.
SYLVANUS AND ARTEMUS BISHOP.
Sylvanus Bishop was one of six brothers who settled in l'om- pey in 1793-94 ; he had previous to this served in the Revo- lutionary war ; he came from Kinderhook, Columbia Coun- ty, N. Y., in the year first mentioned, and bought land in the vicinity of Pompey Hill and began to clear and improve it; in the following year he brought his wife and eldest
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child, making the entire jorney on horse back and carrying their baby, then but six months old, in their arms. After about twenty years residence in Pompey they removed to Oswego; he lived to be over ninety-five years and died inJune 1860. During his early residence in Pompey, his second son, Artemas Bishop,was born December 30th, 1795, whose life has been one of marked success and usefulness in the profession of his choice ; when but a child he manifested a love for study which induced his parents to give him the ad- vantages offered by the towns people in the "Old Pompey Academy," under the tuition of Messrs. Burchard and Leon- ard. He entered Union College in 1815, with Orange But- ler and others from Pompey, and was a class-mate of Hon. William H. Seward; having graduated, he studied Theology at Princeton, during which time he made a number of pro- fessional visits to the Chappel in the "Old Academy"in Pom- pey ; while at Princeton he decided to devote his life to the Missionary work, at the Sandwich Islands. In October, 1822, he married Miss Elizabeth Edwards, of Boston ; they imme- diately joined the second company of Missionaries, then about to start from Hartford, Connecticut, in the ship Thames ; after a voyage of over six months, they reached the Island in safety. Among the earlier labors of this faithful and eminent Missionary, were his translations of the Bible, and a Hymn Book into the Hawaiian language ; he also made an excellent translation of Pilgrims Progress, in the same language. Later in life he was employed by the Unit- ed States Government, in making Geological Surveys of the Island ; he is now the Senior Missionary in that field ; he has accomplished his half century of labor in that depart- ment. A son and daughter have both been sent to the United States to receive an education suitable to assist him in his arduous labors, both having returned some years ago.
REV. ARTEMAS BISHOP.
One after another, the venerable laborers, whose lives of faithful service have done so much for the people of the Sand-
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wich Islands, are passing away. The death of Mr. Bishop, one of the second company who went as Missionaries to those islands, was mentioned in the "Herald" for February. The notice of his life is gathered from a sermon preached at Honolulu, on the Sabbath after he died, by Rev. Dr. Da- mon :-
"The Rev. Artemas Bishop was born in Pompey, N. Y., December 30th, 1705 ; hence, in a few days, he would have been seventy-seven years old. He graduated at Union Col- lege in 1819, and at Princeton Theological Seminary, in 1822. After marriage with Miss Elizabeth Edwards, of Boston, he-embarked in November, 1822, at New Haven, with the first reinforcement of Missionaries destined for these islands. Among his asso ciates were the Rev. Messrs. Rich- ards and Stewart, Mr. Chamberlain, and several others. At his embarkation a large concourse assembled, and then was sung, for the first time, the hymn written by William B. Tappan, which has been so oft repeated :-
" Wake, Isles of the South"! your redemption is near, No longer repose in the borders of gloom.'
"The company landed at Honolulu on the last Sabbath of April, 1823, and Mr. Bishop was stationed at Kailua, there to become the associate of the Rev. Asa Thurston. Having acquired the language, he became associated with Mr. Thurston in the work of translating the Bible. Together, they translated the books of Genesis, Numbers and Deuter- onomy, and the Epis tles of Paul to the Romans and Gala- tions ; while alone, he translated the 2d book of Samuel and the 1st of Chronicles.
" After remaining about twelve years at Kailua, he re- moved to Ewa, on the island of Oahu, where he labored for about twenty years with great usefulness and success. While residing at this station, he translated ' Pilgrim's Pro- gress,' and many other books. His accurate knowledge of the Hawaiian language always gave him authority in all matters involving questions of criticism and translation. His fondness for study, reading, and literary pursuits was
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preserved to the very close of his career. He was wont to take cheerful views of life, ever looking on the bright side of all subjects. There was a golden thread of quiet humor interwoven into the texture of his mind. Solomon says, 'A man that hath friends, must show himself friendly.' He was one of those friendly, genial, and companionable men' whose presence does not chill, but warms society.
" It is quite remarkable, that with the rapid tide of travel rushing past our islands, he never should have left them af- ter his arrival, except on a visit as delegate to the Marquesas Mission, in 1858. He never rode upon or saw a railroad, or witnessed the operation of the telegraph. Few men, how- ever, were better acquainted with the progress of scientific discovery. Emphatically might Goldsmith's description of the Vicar, in the 'Deserted Village,' apply to him, while officiating, for nearly forty years, as a missionary at Kailna and Ewa :-
". A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year; Remote from town he ran his godly race. Nor o'er had changed, nor wished to change his place. Unskillful he to fawn, or seek for power, By doctrines fashioned to the varying hom ; Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize, More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.'
" It is quite impossible not to admire the life of such a veteran Missionary, who left his country fifty years ago, and after voyaging around Cape Horn, settled down among the Hawaiians to learn their language, assist in reducing it to a written form, and then spend a long lifetime in preaching and laboring among this people. His thoughts have be- come their thoughts. By means of the sermons which he preached, books and hymns which he wrote and translated, and above all, by the life which he led, his own life-thoughts have become interwoven and intertwined with the life- thoughts and literature of Hawaiians.
" As a minister of the gospel, he necessarily made the whole Bible his life-study, but when he ceased from the ac-
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tive duties of the ministry, and enjoyed time for calm reflec- tion and meditation; his mind dwelt almost exclusively upon the prophetic parts of Scripture, and especially upon the' Book of Revelation. ' It afforded him unspeakable satisfac- tion to contemplate the future triumphs of the gospel as nu- folded in these prophetic portions. He had no doubts and misgivings upon the subject, but from his extensive reading of history, and the progress of the nations in science, art, religion and civilization, he confidently anticipated the un- iversal spread of Christianity over the whole earth."
ELIZUR BRACE,
BY HIS SON, REV. SAMUEL W. BRACE, OF UTICA, N. Y.
In opening Mr. J. V. H. Clarke's reminiscences of Onon- daga County, I find that he has set down Pompey as one of the original towns formed at the first organization of the County in 1794, and that it comprised at that time the town- ships of Pompey (as it now is), Fabius and Tully, and a part of the Onondaga Reservation, including LaFayette; he in- forms us farther, that the township obtained great celebrity at a very early period, and was principally settled by people from New England, many of whom took up their residence in it while it was a part of the township of Mexico, Herki- mer County. The first settlers, he says, in the present town of Pompey, were Ebenezer Butler, from Ilarwinton, Connec- ticut, who located on Lot number 65, in 1792. His brother, Jesse Butler, and Jacob Hoar, and Mr. Clarke might have added his brother-in-law, Nathan Davis, and others, came on in the spring of the same year. My father, Captain Elizur Brace, was a native of the same town of Harwinton, in Litchfield County, and a neighbor of those adventurous pioneers to the then far west, but did not move to Pompey until four years afterwards, that is in 1796. In the spring of that year he made a journey, mainly on foot, to the wil- derness settlement of his former neighbors, and purchased of Ebenezer Butler a portion of land south of the present village and covering entirely the summit of the hill. Ou
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this he commenced the erection of a log house, after the fashion of others who had preceded him in the new and far off. settlement; this house, however, he did not finish until after, his removal there with his family, in the latter part of October of the same year ; hence our accommodations, as I well remember, for I was then six and a half years of age, were scant and uncomfortable, until our famous log house, with two rooms, and a linter, as it was then called, was fit for occupancy. We located, by the kindly consent of our old neighbors, in the first school house ever built on Pom- pey Hill, and this, of course, was a log structure of but one room, and at that time, for a few weeks, unoccupied. On its split-out, hewed and uneven floor, we spread our beds, for our bedsteads had been left in the country where they were made; here, also, we cooked and ate our homely meals, sat upon our rough benches and hoped for a day of better things. Such a day at length arrived, for before the setting in of winter, we found ourselves comfortably located in our new and highly elevated dwelling, as it was not only like a city set upon a hill, but probably the second best in the set- tlement. Our neighbors were munificently mindful of us in their offerings of vegetables and other materials of an edible character, as they had them to sparc. In the meantime, or before leaving our pent up quarters in the school house, my father had manufactured a table from cherry planks, split from a log given him by Esq. Butler, as this gentleman was then beginning to be called. To her great sorrow, my mother's fine table, the only one we attempted to bring with us, got completely shipwrecked on the way. According to the custom of olden times, a house warming was expected when we were fully settled in our log palace. With its two windows, of twelve lights each, which my father had been careful to bring with him; beside these and other things which might be named, an excellent split and hewed bass- wood floor-two doors of like material, with latches and latch-strings hanging out, a chimney in the middle, partly of stone, and topped out with rift-sticks and plastered, were
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some of the leading characteristics of our new dwelling; and as to the house-warming, so much desired and talked oť by our friends and neighbors, that was deferred till mid- winter, when the marriage ceremony of my oldest sister was to take place. She had early on our arrival, become affi- anced to Dr. Walter Colton, the young physician of the town, and the first that ever settled in it for practice, though Mr. Clarke, in his reminiscences of Pompey, states the case entirely different, informing us that Dr. Samuel Beach was the first physician in this town, having come there in 1798. and that Dr. Josiah Colton settled two miles east of Pompey Hill in 1801. This statement, with sundry other mistakes of Mr. Clarke, is too palpable to need refutation. Dr. Tib- bals, of whom he speaks in after years, became a resident of the place, and a co-practitioner with Dr. Colton, as the ride of the latter became very extensive, hardly circum- scribed by the limits of the whole large county. Dr. Colton early entered into the politics of the day, although such a thing as a newspaper was unknown, except as fugitive copies of the Albany papers were obtained from the postoffice at Onondaga Hollow. This was the only postoffice in the County, and all the region round about. Daniel Wood, Esq., was the first postmaster at Pompey Hill in 1811 ; pre- vious to that time, the Hollow was the principal postoffice for the town, and to it, the writer, in the days of his early youth, often went as the post-boy for the neighbors, some- times on horse-back, but oftener on foot. At that period there was no Syracuse, but a miserable drunken place, known as Cossit's Corners, and approached by roads of cor- duroy construction, and as the Irishmen of Salt Point used to say, a plentiful variety of mud holes. In those days, slavery was rife in all parts of the Empire State, nor did it entirely cease until 1828, when it came to an end by gradual emancipation. Pompey had its slaves ; a number were held on the Hill by some of the most respectable families, but treated not as slaves in the south were said to be, but with much lenity and kindness. They were, however, quite nu
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merous in the northwestern part of the town, near what is now Jamesville; sundry families there as the De Witts and DePuys, of Dutch extraction, held numbers of them, and with their labor entered largely into the cultivation of to- bacco; hence it was that Pompey became the first town in' all Central and Western New York that was defiled with the raising of this filthy and poisonous plant. I do not remem- ber to have seen a one, or even a two-horse wagon on Pom- pey Hill earlier than 1804; indeed, horses were searce and riding vehicles drawn by them were things of after consider- ation. The saddle, Dr. Franklin's seat of health, was in vogue for getting about, when the use of feet was re- linquished ; my mother, of course, had her down country pillion, like sundry others who had immigrated from the land of steady habits with their husbands and families. Ox teams were the order of the day, both in summer and win- ter, when the feet or saddle were not used; hence, carts and sleds, and those often of a clumsey character, were the modes of swiftest conveyance. The earliest school that I attended was taught by Miss Lucy Jerome, afterwards the mother of the Hon. George Geddes, a lady of distinguished talents and high mental culture. Mr. Merrit Butler, of Pompey, and myself, are probably the only persons living who attended that school, which was kept two summers in succession, but as Mr. Butler is twenty days in advance ot me on life's rug- ged and eventful journey, he is allowed to speak for himself and to correct me, if wrong in this matter of more than seventy years memory. As descendants of Puritans, the early inhabitants of Pompey were strict observers of the Sabbath, keeping themselves and their children at home, ex- cept when they were favored with some kind of public re- ligious services on that holy day. If no Missionary or regu- lar minister of the gospel was among them, a prayer meeting was usually held, or a sermon read, and for attendance on Sabbath service, not men only, but women, (ladies, indeed,) would walk two or three miles or more. They used to meet in barns, private houses and school houses. The Rev.
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